The operation is scrubbed...
Graphically its got charm with a great setting that looks realistic enough and keeps that scruffy look in places, which always works well for a battlefield setting. Game models from player, weapons and vehicles look authentic enough with special mention to the look of tracer fire during engagements, which kicks up the look of the game a notch or two. However explosions in the game are dull and look like they are from the previous generation of graphics.
The game sounds real enough with decent voice acting and what little of a music track there is but both could of been much better. The sound comes into its own on the battlefield from hearing squad commands being shouted to the array of bullets flying past you during combat.
Codemasters promised us realistic combat but in a way to suit all players and early on you feel they have the balance right but the more you play the more you discover they haven't. It takes far too many bullets to drop you and your enemies though that could be put down to a buggy hit detection box. Combat is fun when your in the middle of it all but get to close and your bullets seem to have less effect. A big problem is you are limited with your set up gear and I am not talking about class but what you can equip on your gun mainly sights. Not allowing you to choose between Iron Sights/Red Dot or scope is pitiful because the iron sight makes it so so much harder to spot anyone in dense area's and most guns have that sight. The Level design is schizophrenic at best with most night missions and early day ones being decent but at times the set up is well short of realistic. Basically your 4 man squad must achieve many things on their own forgetting your part of the U.S Army and are timed to achieve most objectives because the Americans in game seem to feel sending there Heli's or Tanks before the danger is dealt with is how you fight a war. Codemasters said many times you would have to be tactical to complete this game but being rushed so often with time limits force you to play the game more like Call of Duty at times.
The AI is another schizophrenic aspect of the game manly due to your own squad who will plain refuse orders or act plain dumb. Your medic will refuse to heal at times or a team mate might get stuck on hugging part of the land around you like a tree. Squad AI shooting is that of a school kid at times and they will love to give away your position by just standing up randomly to be seen by enemies. You will want to play this game with human players if you can especially because the enemy AI is quite accurate as they should be though they have the clever idea to just hit the floor in open barren area's at the sound of a gunshot, leaving them so open.
Operation Flashpoint 2 is full of bugs some critical like when your character will just die for no reason or won't have a weapon in his hand at the loading up of a level. There are bugs in cover where the object providing you cover contains no mass and bullets or your body can go through them at will. There are bugs in the missions themselves forcing you to restart because you can't advance. Multiplayer is a total farce with crappy AI instead of humans filling most of the map in small small sections of the island. Codemasters kept banging on about the size of the island but all missions are so linear you can't really explore it and where a similar genre type game, Joint Operations offered a big open multiplayer system over 6 years ago, you are so restricted in this 2009 game.
At the end of the day Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising is a bug fueled FPS with a short/poorly planned single player and offers a restricted online feature giving the game zero replay value. So much of the content talked about in late 2008 and in 2009 is not in the game and instead of offering you a realistic gameplay focused on team play, we get the feeling this game was rushed by at least 6 months if not a full year.
One of the biggest letdowns in gaming history.